


come into my kitchen, hungry

by marblecut (sunbound)



Category: One Piece
Genre: Canon Universe, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, kinda? it's food as comfort basically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-17
Updated: 2021-03-17
Packaged: 2021-03-24 22:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30079083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbound/pseuds/marblecut
Summary: Luffy gets down sometimes, and when this happens, he comes to him.
Relationships: Monkey D. Luffy/Vinsmoke Sanji
Comments: 12
Kudos: 56





	come into my kitchen, hungry

**Author's Note:**

> oda said luffy is brazilian and so am i and the pandemic got me missing barbecue w my friends so. this was born, and like every child, it became its own thing.
> 
> (set somewhere post wano. there's a contextless spoiler for wci bc, as a sanjinist, it still makes me lose my mind ♡)

"the corruption begins with the mouth, the tongue, the wanting.

the first poem in the world is  _ i want to eat." _

(erica jong, from _'where it begins'._ 1970)

Luffy gets down sometimes, which throws the entire ship off its usual rhythm, leaves them hovering in the familiar rooms of the Sunny like guests, hands creatures of their own that forgot how to carry on their tasks and usual hobbies.

Luffy gets down sometimes, and when this happens, he comes to him.

“Sanji,” Luffy whines, dragging out the first syllable of his name in the way he does, like that’s how Sanji’s name was intended to be called all along. “Sanji, I’m hungry,” but this means something else entirely. Luffy doesn’t speak in codes, but his response to most things is _I’ll feel better once I’ve eaten,_ so Sanji has learned how to read each one of those.

 _I’m hungry,_ and it might mean tired or hurt or sad. _I’m hungry,_ and food is an easy comfort, warm on the tongue, on the stomach.

“Sanji,” Luffy whines again, sitting by the counter. “Is it dinner time already?”

Sanji looks at the clock. 4PM. “Not yet, Luffy.”

“But I’m hungry,” and his voice is muffled, face buried in his own arms.

Luffy doesn’t get sad like this often, head down and droopy eyes, so Sanji walks over to him and ruffles his hair, smiling reassuringly. “I’ll make you something, then,” he says and Luffy beams.

“Can I stay here? I won’t get in the way.”

“Since when do you ask permission for anything?” Sanji chuckles and nods towards the couch. “Go wait there,” and Luffy giggles, satisfied, already jumping onto the piece of furniture.

 _I’m hungry,_ and this time, it means homesickness, or as homesick as someone like Luffy gets for anything other than the sea around them. He was never meant for solid ground, but home is something to carry around, and Luffy does so like everyone else: the Goa kingdom, Makino and the mayor, Ace and Sabo, Dadan and the mountain bandits—a childhood long gone, but never forgotten, always retold and revisited by him.

Sanji can’t give any of that back to him, but he’s a cook, so he throws charcoal into the barbecue grill’s pit and lights a fire. He takes the meat out of the fridge, seasons it with coarse salt; he gets garlic, mayo, parsley, oregano and grated parmesan, turns them into a paste, sprinkles salt and pepper into the mix, spreads it over the baguette slices.

“What are you making?” Luffy asks, already bored of waiting. Sanji risks a glance over his shoulder to find his captain lying upside down, legs propped up against the wall. He smiles.

“You’ll see.”

He places the meat on the grill and the garlic bread beside it, and he crosses his arms, waiting until the meat is good enough to turn over. Luffy is still lying down, staring at the ceiling, tapping his foot to a song only he can listen to. Outside the kitchen, the waves gently crash against the Sunny’s hull, swaying them rhythmically.

“When we were kids,” Luffy speaks up suddenly, sitting properly on the couch, “Dogra and Magra would always make the _best_ barbecue ever, no matter what funny meat we brought home,” he giggles. “When I first got there, Ace would always steal all the meat first, though,” and he keeps talking. Home carried around, harboured in a heart.

Sanji listens and he cooks, which is home in its own way: recipes carried around, harboured in a heart. A labour in love, mostly—cooking out of curiosity, first, then as an escape from loneliness, from fear. Clumsy hands and pure intentions, and his mother smiled widely at him. _It’s good._ Then, he was taught, not by books but by people of steadier hands.

So if he cooks in a certain way, seasons the meat like this or bakes a cake like that, then that’s an ode to those who taught him. So he carries them around, inside his heart, imbued in the movements of his hands, kindness and duty both, and Sanji thinks, _I’m the cook of your ship,_ which entails a tender kind of love.

“The barbecue parties were _so_ fun,” Luffy continues. “The mayor would always bring, like, those _big_ bags of charcoal, and Makino would bring bottles and bottles of drinks from her bar. Me and Ace and Sabo, we’d go hunt, and everyone would be together for the whole day. There was one time, when me and Ace knocked over the barbecue grill, Dadan tried to throw her sandals at us but we were faster,” he giggles. “Sabo was laughing the whole time, and so Dadan threw her shoe at him and he complained for three days.”

Luffy is smiling, not really looking at anything as he talks, mind lost in his memories, so Sanji takes the opportunity to watch: the mess of dark hair falling on his forehead, how it billows in the ocean wind when he sits on the Sunny’s figurehead; the scar under his eye, pinkish skin wrinkling every time Luffy laughs; soft lips and sharp canines that have unceremoniously dug into Sanji’s food more times than either of them care to count. Sanji grins. In a way, those teeth and lips are for him.

“Sanji,” Luffy calls and Sanji snaps back, looks at Luffy looking back. His captain giggles. “You’re funny.”

“Shut up,” he says, throwing a dishcloth at him. “Go get everyone, it’s almost ready.”

Luffy is on his feet before the sentence ends properly, already going for the door. He yanks it open, crosses it, but then his head pops back into the galley, his neck stretching from wherever the rest of Luffy’s body is. “Oi, Sanji,” and Sanji looks up from the cutting board. “Thank you,” and oh, is Luffy’s smile beautiful: something bright, something _honest_ and open and free. Something like the sea itself, sunlight filtered through it, and Sanji thinks of swimming and looking up from underwater, how the sun shines differently like this, more tangible.

“No need to thank me, Luffy.”

 _I’m your cook after all,_ he thinks as he cuts the meat into strips, sets them aside on a plate. He takes out some of the skewers from the grill, replacing it with raw ones. Carefully, he unwraps the tin foil around the sweet potatoes because Chopper likes them more than the barbecue itself, so Sanji always makes them for him. He sets the table as they all start to file in the galley.

It starts at the dinner table, as it always does, except it grows, their laughs roaring louder and louder, jugs and jugs of beer and sake being passed around until it’s a party, until they’re moving it to the deck. Luffy hauls the table, holds it above his head, and Sanji tries to tell him, “Luffy, the food! You’ll drop the food,” but Luffy just laughs. Everyone takes their own chairs, except for Zoro, who takes their captain’s too.

Sanji gets there, and Chopper and Usopp are already dancing on the table, singing at the top of their lungs to a song Brook didn’t even _start_ playing yet. Luffy throws his arm across the table, loops it three times around Usopp’s waist and pulls both him and Chopper to where he is, the three of them crashing in a mess of limbs and laughter.

Luffy seems cheerier, lighter, and Sanji smiles contently as he withdraws fore, standing near the figurehead and lighting a cigarette. It’s peaceful like this, the crew moving like a well-oiled machine again, and he listens to the ruckus. The sea breeze carries the song all the way to where he is and night has finally fallen completely.

It’s familiar.

In between the notes of Brook’s violins, he hears the clicking of heels and looks down from the stars to find Nami, a skewer stick between her teeth as she approaches him. “Cigarette break?” she asks and Sanji nods, flicking his cigarette over the ashtray. She leans on the rail beside him and she smells of vanilla because that’s the perfume she wears, but there’s also a tinge of alcohol with it. “Thank you, you know.”

“For what?”

“Cheering Luffy up,” Nami clarifies, taking the stick out of her mouth and snapping it in half. “It’s always weird when he’s sad.”

“No need to thank me, Nami-san. We all—”

“You always know what to do,” she interrupts. “When he’s like that. You understand him, somehow, and you know what to cook to make him feel better.” Sanji holds back the need to say, _Well, Luffy would be happy with rock soup even._ “So. Thank you for taking care of him.”

Sanji doesn’t know what to say to that, but that’s because he never knows what to say to Nami in general after Whole Cake. She forgave him, he knows that much, but it has less to do with the gravity of his mistakes and more to do with Nami’s own kindness. She’s a kind woman, soft heart behind a hardened ribcage.

He knows when he fucks up, and Sanji remembers the anger in her eyes from those months ago. Even now, he still feels undeserving of any of their forgiveness, but Nami’s especially because she watched it, because she was the one to pick Luffy up and sit beside him and _wait,_ because he made her cry.

He nods and Nami pats him on the shoulder. Her hands smell of tangerines like they always do, the citrus sting of it always under her nails and between the lines of her fingertips. “He’s our captain,” he offers and she rolls her eyes, flicks him on the forehead. “Nami-san!” he protests, rubbing the spot.

“He’s more than that,” she says. “You don’t take care of him out of your duty as a cook alone,” and before Sanji can say anything, Usopp is shouting all the way across the deck, slurring his words together, but challenging Nami to beat him in another drinking contest and she laughs, heading his way.

Sanji stares at his hands instead. _It’s not out of your duty alone,_ but he’s a cook so the lines between those blur easily, his every affection and care translated into the tasks his hands carry out. _He’s our captain,_ and Sanji thinks it’s a good enough reason: it took him out of the Baratie and into the Grand Line; it made him wait, training to be better, a better cook, and if he became a better fighter too, then that was a side effect; it carried him back to Sabaody and into the New World. It will carry him to the All Blue.

It’s a good enough reason, he decides.

Luffy, as always, is in the centre of the party, the heart of it, mouth stuffed full of food, and it’s a mess, the way he sings and eats at the same time. Sanji thinks he should teach him some table manners, but it wouldn’t be Luffy otherwise, magnetic and crooked in his clothes where Sanji always keeps his shirts unblemished.

As natural as it gets, he finds himself being pulled back into the party, the noise of it, the heart of it. When the food threatens to run short, Sanji returns to the kitchen and cooks some more, bringing it back to the table. Luffy seems cheerful as ever, cheeks flushed and hat secured on his head, and the night sings itself away until everyone is too tired: Jimbei goes first, then Robin, then Franky; Nami makes Zoro drag Usopp to his bed before leaving, and Chopper follows track; a few minutes later, Zoro climbs up to the crow’s nest; Brook finishes his song and bows to them, which makes Luffy laugh.

Sanji glances at the mess of jugs and glasses and plates and bowls on the table, and sighs. Luffy, head thrown back in his laughter, looks at Sanji from the corner of his eye. There’s something gravitational about it, about the flush on his cheeks, about his teeth bared in a smile, and Sanji can’t look away; doesn’t even want to.

Luffy giggles, then, and rockets himself across the table, perching on it, landing in front of Sanji, feet on his chair. “It was a nice party,” he says.

Sanji puts a cigarette between his lips, lights it, and Luffy watches him, eyes always attentive. “Well, you made it a party,” he counters, truthfully. When he started cooking, hours ago, he didn’t imagine it’d grow into a celebration.

“No party without food,” Luffy says and he’s still looking. Sanji feels thrown back two years into the past, Luffy smiling down at him. _I found a good cook,_ an invitation on his lips and honesty in his eyes when Sanji told him about the All Blue. No skepticism or mockery, never telling Sanji it was impossible or just a legend. He chases his own tall tale after all.

Like back then, Luffy watches him with a candor only the sea has ever spared him, and Sanji feels bigger than his body under that gaze.

The deck is silent now that it’s mostly empty, the wind assuredly blowing into the sails, carrying them forward. He’s on watch duty tonight, and Usopp was meant to be as well, but he’s probably passed out on his hammock, so. He needs to clean the table, take everything back into the kitchen, and he can worry about the dishes tomorrow morning, but he needs to at least—

Luffy’s eyes won’t leave his face and Sanji doesn’t find it in himself to move. “Shouldn’t you go to sleep too?” he asks.

“Don’t want to yet,” but his eyes are already half-lidded.

“So help me bring these back into the kitchen,” he says, hitting Luffy’s knee with the back of his hand, and Luffy hops down from the table, his sandals clacking against the deck floor.

As easily as he hauled the table outside, he hauls it back inside the galley, and Sanji blinks. He knows of his captain’s strength, but it’s starstrucking to see it like this, stripped of its violence, used for something so mundane. A monstrous strength, but never directed at them. It’s reassuring in its own way.

He follows Luffy inside to find him perched on the table again, as if the couch weren’t right there. Sanji chuckles as he starts to pile the plates and gather the glasses, taking them to the sink. It’s a silent thing, only the porcelain clicking against each other, and it’s eerie when Luffy watches quietly like this.

For as steady as Sanji’s hands are, they start to fumble as soon as Luffy grabs his wrists, steers him towards him. “Sanji,” he calls. Unlike earlier, it’s not a whine, elongated vowels and muffled voice. Unlike earlier, it doesn’t mean _Pay attention to me;_ Luffy already knows every ounce of Sanji’s attention is on him. This time, it means _Sanji,_ just as demanding, and somewhere in his eyes, Luffy is still saying those same words from earlier.

So Sanji takes a step closer, and then another, standing between Luffy's legs. When Luffy kisses him, his mouth faintly tastes of alcohol, and Sanji discovers a new brand of inebriating, chasing it with his tongue. Luffy’s hands are on either side of his face, warm, so warm, and Sanji leans into the touch of Luffy’s lips.

Monsters are hungry things, the stories always warn, and Luffy wraps his legs around Sanji’s hips, pulling him in, open-mouthed, his kissing a kind of eating. Like everything else he does, Luffy kisses with all he has, never in half-measures, and Sanji _melts,_ dissolving like sugarcubes on wet tongue.

Kisses like these, they don’t end: they’re interrupted by protesting lungs, and so they break apart. Sanji stares into Luffy’s eyes, the serenity of them. Sanji sees them crinkle before he hears him giggle. “Now I can go to sleep,” Luffy says and Sanji laughs, loud and honest.

“What, did you want a goodnight kiss?”

Luffy smiles before resting his head on Sanji’s shoulders, legs still wrapped around his hips, arms still around his waist. Sanji sighs, fondness thick enough to be a blanket as he picks Luffy up to take him back to the men’s quarters.

As any hungry affair ought to, this, too, ends at the dinner table.

**Author's Note:**

> the whole "it begins/ends at the dinner table" thing is a reference to the first poem in [this](https://floresetcorvi.co.vu/post/620773254843482112) web weaving post! 
> 
> this fic has been sitting in my google docs for the longest time. then yesterday i wrote 2k for it while i should be doing work, so here we are! thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed this lil fic ♡♡♡
> 
> if you want to, you can find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/sanjinism) (i rt a bunch of fanart and scream in portuguese about life), and on [tumblr](https://floresetcorvi.co.vu/)


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